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About the Author
After graduating from Harvard, Jim Stinson studied theater history at the Yale Graduate
School and directing at the Yale School of Drama before transferring to the UCLA fi lm school,
where he earned the degree of Master of Fine Arts. Although he has worked on fi lmed
commercials, TV series, and feature fi lms, he has spent most of his career as a writer, producer,
director, videographer, and/or editor of educational and corporate video programs.
In the classroom, Mr. Stinson has taught fi lm production at Art Center College of Design,
fi lm studies at California State University, Los Angeles, and video production at La Cañada
High School, La Cañada, CA.
For twelve years, he was a columnist and contributing editor at Videomaker magazine.
In addition to Video: Digital Communication & Production, his published works include fi ve
novels: Double Exposure, Low Angles, Truck Shot, TV Safe, and Tassy Morgan’s Bluff, as well as
the study Reconstructions of Elizabethan Public Playhouses.
About This Book
Video: Digital Communication & Production fulfi lls the promise of its title by covering
both the ways in which video communicates with viewers, and the methods by which
it does so. Communication is featured because production by itself has no purpose. If
communication were excluded, this book would be like a carpentry manual that covered
sawing, drilling, and nailing, without ever explaining how to build anything.
This book treats video as a mature and independent medium, rather than merely a
variant of television or a recording alternative to fi lm. Video has become fully empowered
by the digital revolution that is transforming so many aspects of twenty-fi rst century life.
The topics in this book have been selected and organized with two groups of readers
in mind: students preparing for careers in communications media and creators of personal
programs who expect to make videos of professional caliber. Though the text does not pretend
to include all there is to know about video, it does cover all you need to get started.
To organize this sprawling subject, Video: Digital Communication & Production is presented
in six major sections:
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Chapters 1 and 2 help you start making videos immediately.
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Chapters 3 through 8 cover video communication—the concepts and principles behind
the hardware and production techniques.
●
Chapters 9 through 11 present the crucial process of preproduction—preparing to make
successful programs.
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Chapters 12 through 17 introduce all major aspects of videography, lighting, and audio.
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Chapters 18 and 19 survey the art of directing—both the camera and the people it records.
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Chapters 20 through 23 explain the basics of postproduction. This edition provides
greatly expanded coverage of digital editing processes and techniques.
This organization may be termed “semi-random access” because on one hand, it is
possible to read only the chapters desired in any order. On the other hand, individual
chapters are generally more useful in conjunction with the other chapters in the section. In
most cases, larger subjects have been distributed among multiple chapters for simplicity of
presentation. Since the same concepts and techniques may apply to procedures covered in
different chapters, expect to fi nd occasional duplication of material.